Friday, July 24, 2009

Tiff Answers! Part 1

Wow, you guys are doing great with Ask Tiff! I had no idea you all had so many questions about me. I now have a lot of blogging to do. I am only going to answer a couple of the questions now, since I can be a bit, umm, long-winded and this would be a really long post if I didn't cut it off. And I know you all have lives to live, and don't want to spend half the day reading about my life. I'll keep questions open till Sunday, and answer the rest throughout the week. Feel free to click HERE for the original post and to ask a question of your own.

Here we go! I'm so excited!

When did you realize you loved photography enough to make a career (even if a part-time one) out of it? ~your sister-in-law Beth

Well, to make a short story long (which is something I am good at,) I have actually been involved in photography for a long time. I was in Campfire girls when I was young, and one of the girls' father was a photographer. We took a trip to the zoo and took pictures with black and white film, then went to his house where he had all the developing gear and we developed our own pictures. I was loved it, the whole process fascinated me. I was eight.

In Jr High, I got involved in photography as a 4-H project. Our family took a road trip to New Jersey, taking five weeks to drive across the country in our minivan and seeing the country. I used my dad's manual camera, and learned a lot about f-stop and shutter speed. I was still thrilled with the whole idea of it all, and was given a limit of two rolls of film a day when we were sight seeing. I got a great shot of the capital building in DC, where the light reflected off the filter and the photo looked like it had alien space ships surrounding it.

Here, I took a picture of the picture. No, I am not cool enough to have a scanner, and this print has been around a while so this is kinda scratched up and not the best quality, but here's the picture I am talking about.I entered this photo in the fair and won Best In Show, and then entered it at the State fair in Puyallup and got a Judges Choice. I was thrilled and decided to pursue a career in photography.

When looking at colleges, I found a few colleges that had photography programs. I remember poring over the brochures of colleges far, far away and dreaming of life on my own. But I freaked out a little at the thought of it all, and chose to stay close to home and go to the local community college instead.

While in college, I got a job as a photographer at one of the department store photo studios. It was great for a while to be nineteen and have the job title of photographer, but reality hit soon after- since I had basically no control over the camera or lighting, I was not a photographer, but a people-poser and a button-pusher. I had to sing a few too many rounds of Barney's song to make screaming kids look halfway decent and I got bored and moved on to a graphic design company which specialized in model and talent comp cards. There I learned Photoshop and Pagemaker, and even though I was not directly involved in photography, it was a big part of the industry.

Life took over, and I was not involved in photography for quite a few years. When my sis-in-law Amy started her business, I was thrilled for her, and told her if she ever needed help to call me. My first wedding was last year for Amy's sister-in-law, where Amy needed to be in some of the pictures. I went for the day, and Amy handed me a camera, put it on manual mode, and told me to do my best. I was used to my dad's film camera where you only had a few settings to mess with, and the transition to a professional digital camera was a little bit of a shock. I would mess around with things, try to make the shot work, and then every half hour or so give the camera back to Amy so that she could put the settings back where they needed to be. I went into the day thinking I knew about photography, and finished realizing I did not know a thing.

But once again, I was hooked.

Although I still have a ton to learn, wedding photography has been a perfect job for me. I can stay home with the kids, and only work weekends when Marty is available. I can choose which weddings I work, and my boss is awesomely cool. Like, super-cool. I hope to one day have her level of cool-ocity. :)

But really, I have the best job in the world!

Did you always want a big family? With 4 kids how many loads of laundry do you do a week? Do you have a dishwasher? If so, how often do you run it? Kind of silly questions, but I only have 1 toddler and I feel like I'm always doing laundry or the dishes...so I'm curious how it is with more kids! Hope this helps! :)Heather

When Marty and I were going through pre-marital counseling, we talked about everything we wanted for our future, including the number of kids. Marty is one of four, and I am one of two. My brother and I did not get along when we were growing up, and I always wanted more siblings to play with. Marty and I decided on 2.5 children. We would have two, and then re-evaluate. If we had three, we would re-evaluate, and possibly have four, but no more than that. So, although some of our kids were God's plan and not ours, we love it. We absolutely love having a big family, and even though life is crazy most of the time, we wouldn't have it any other way.

As far as your other questions, I remember when Emma was born and the shock at the amount of laundry one small child went through. After Drew, I never even noticed a difference in the volume of laundry. I think with each child, you lose enough sanity/memory that it doesn't even mater anymore.

I would never have survived in the olden days without my dishwasher and washer and dryer. When I actually keep up on things, the dishwasher runs twice a day and I do two loads of laundry a day. However I am quite often not caught up.

Laundry is my nemesis. I don't know why, but I have a real problem with all the folding and putting away. Usually the clean laundry piles up for a couple of days before we have a laundry folding party and get it all taken care of.

Here's my point of view. The laundry and the dishes and the cooking and the vacuuming and the cleaning and the bathrooms and everything else can be done every day. But if I were to do all these things, I would never have time to sit and read my kids a book, or take them to the park or the beach, or play trains with them or color. So I don't do it all. My house is cluttered, there are Cheerios on the kitchen floor and laundry piles up. When the kids go to school, those things will still be there. Well, I do hope I have a chance to sweep up the Cheerios before they all go to school, or that would just be gross. But you get my point. Kids are only little for so long, and I don't want to miss their childhood because I was making sure my door frames would pass the white-glove test.

You have to pick what is most important to you (and your spouse) and let the rest slide. And yes, you can still be SuperMom, even if you let the kids draw murals in the dust that gathers on the shelves!

Well, that's all I will answer for now. Keep the questions coming! Have a great weekend!

Alright dear, I will give you credit for doing dishes. It would be a whole lot harder without your willing help. You do a great job, and we make a good team!

But if you get credit for washing dishes, do I also get to tell everyone how difficult bedtime is because you think "calm down time" includes roaring like a monster and chasing the kids through the house? Just curious...

Christ-following, photo-taking, gluten free cooking, homeschool mom of four. Life is crazy, but I wouldn't change it for anything. Well, I might trade it for the same life, but with a housekeeper. Yeah, that'd be nice.